Calendar for January 1st, 2014

New Year's Day

Named for the Roman god Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings, January was originally the 11th month, not the 1st, until at least 153 B.C. Janus looks simultaneously to the future and the past, a fitting symbol for this first day of the year. The weather of the first 12 days of the year is said to be indicative of the following 12 months.

Every Year

Circumcision

1730s

Born 1735: Paul Revere (patriot)

1750s

Born 1752: Betsy Ross (patriot)

1770s

1776: First U.S. flag, The Grand Union, was displayed by George Washington; it became the unofficial national flag, preceding the 13-star, 13 stripe version

1780s

Died 1782: Johann Christian Bach (composer)

1800s

1801: Legislative Union of Great Britain with Ireland under the name of United Kingdom became effective

1801: President John Adams held the first New Year's reception in the White House

1808: Importation of slaves into the U.S. officially banned

1840s

1840: First recorded ten-pin bowling match played at Knickerbocker Alleys, NYC

1860s

1863: The Emancipation Proclamation became law, marking the end of legalized slavery in the U.S.

1870s

Born 1879: E.M. Forster (novelist)

1880s

1889: State of New York introduced the electric chair for capital punishment

1890s

1892: The U.S. government opened an immigrant processing station at Ellis Island, New York

Born 1895: J. Edgar Hoover (director of U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation)

1900s

1902: First Rose Bowl football game played at Pasadena, California

1910s

Born 1911: Hank Greenberg (baseball player)

1913: U.S. Parcel Post service began

1915: The British battleship Formidable was sunk in the English Channel by a German submarine with the loss of 600 lives (WW I)

Born 1919: Carole Landis (actress)

Born 1919: J.D. Salinger (author)

1930s

Born 1932: Terry Moore (actress)

1934: Fiorello La Guardia is inaugurated as mayor of New York

1940s

Born 1943: Don Novello (actor)

Born 1946: Kathleen Casey-Kirschling (official first baby boomer)

1950s

1950: The U.S. Navy commissioned its first woman doctor, Mary Sproul

Born 1957: Nancy Lopez (golfer)

1970s

Died 1972: Maurice Chevalier

1972: Kurt Waldheim inaugurated as Secretary General of the United Nations

1975: John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman, and John Mitchell were found guilty of obstructing justice in the Watergate Incident